Since we are travellers and pilgrims in the world, let us ever ponder on the end of the road, that is of our life, for the end of our roadway is our home (St Columban, 8th sermon).
Come to me, all you that labour and are burdened; I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon yourselves, and learn from me; I am gentle and humble of
heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my
burden light (Matthew 11:29-30, Knox).
GospelMark 3:20-35(English Standard Version, Anglicised)
Then Jesus went home, and the crowd gathered again, so
that they could not even eat.And when his family heard it, they
went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”
And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were
saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he
casts out the demons.”And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan?If a
kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able
to stand.And if Satan has risen up against himself
and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end.But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods,
unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his
house.
“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of
man, and whatever blasphemies they utter,but whoever blasphemes
against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—for they were saying, “He has an
unclean spirit.”
And his mother
and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called
him.And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your
mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.”And he answered them, “Who are my mother
and my brothers?”And looking about at those
who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother
and my brothers!For whoever does the will of
God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”
The note that goes with this painting on Web Gallery of Art - a wonderful website - says: The stick of the sitting figure of about seventy years of age, the knapsack on his shoulders, and the wicker basket all identify him as a pilgrim rather than as a beggar seeking alms.
Pilgrims often are beggars in the sense that some depend entirely on the goodness of others for food and lodging along their way. The Columban seminarians in the Philippines used to go on such a pilgrimage as part of their spiritual formation as Kurt Zion Pala, now ordained and serving in Myanmar, describes inThe Road to Agoo. (I'm not sure if our seminarians still do that).
But sometimes we can see individuals simply as beggars and, in a sense, dismiss them from our thoughts, never knowing their stories, never knowing their humanity. That has been my experience a number of times down the years.
One such experience was during my seminary years, in the summer of 1964, while working for two weeks atThe Morning Star Hostel, run by the Legion of Mary, less than a 15-minute walk from where I lived in Dublin. It was a place of refuge for 'down and out' men. It was far from being a luxury hotel but was a place where every man, whether short-term or long-term, was respected. The facilities have improved since then.
While at the Morning Star I had a couple of long chats with a man I knew by sight. I'll call him Michael, a man aged 40 or thereabouts. He was a street singer, going around different parts of the city singing popular songs and hoping that people would give him a few pennies. Anytime I saw him he was just another beggar to me.
But in our conversations I met in Michael a man who had a spirituality that in a real sense was beyond me. He was highly intelligent and reflected on life. He wasn't from Dublin and didn't tell me how he had ended up in the Morning Star. But I got a sense of a person for whom God was very real. I wondered if he was somewhat out of his mind or if he was some kind of mystic. I felt blessed by knowing him and figured that more likely he was a mystic, certainly a man close to God. And I saw his dignity as a person made in the image of God, the serene dignity of the beggar/pilgrim that Giacomo Ceruti captured in his painting, the serene dignity of the young Jew expelled from his native country captured by Rembrandt.
When his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind.’ These words in today's Gospel remind me of Michael. It is clear that the perception of some of those who knew Jesus was that he was somewhat 'off-centre'. Jesus is here identifying himself with every person who is, in some way, 'off-centre' or perceived to be such. Such persons are not always taken seriously by the rest of us. They are on the margins.
The note that goes with Rembrandt'sYoung Jew as Christ says, The sitter of the painting is a young Jew evicted from Spain and settled in Amsterdam in the neighbourhood of Rembrandt. Another person on the margins, evicted by followers of Jesus from his native country because he was ethnically the same as Jesus and his mother.
I once showed a very poor black and white copy of this painting during a Sunday homily at a Mass in a home for girls in the Philippines where most of the girls had been sexually abused. One, aged 14 or 15, asked if she could keep the copy. I later had a proper print made and framed and gave it to her. I asked her what had drawn her in Rembrandt's painting. She replied, 'He looks so human'.
In today's gospel we see the utter humanity of Jesus, God who became Man. We see his utter vulnerability, allowing himself to be dismissed by some as one who has gone out of his mind.
And then the extraordinary statement by Jesus: Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.
Whatever our nationality, our ethnic origins, our social standing, our level of education, our intellectual or physical abilities, our language, Jesus calls us his brother and sister and mother. His own Mother is the only one, apart from Jesus himself, who carried out God's will perfectly. Nevertheless he considers all who desire, with God's grace, to carry out the Father's will hisbrother and sister and mother.
Jesus showed himself to me 60 years ago through Michael, whom I had seen only as a beggar before I met him. He shows himself to me through Ceruti'sBeggar Resting, through Rembrandt'sYoung Jew as Christ. And Jesus, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, showed his humanity through a very poor print of Rembrandt's painting to my young friend in the Philippines who had been so badly treated!
May the words of Jesus and his presence among us in so many ways fill us with courage and hope!
In most countries this solemnity, formerly celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, is now celebrated on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday, this year replacing the Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. In communities where the Traditional Latin Mass is celebrated Corpus Christi is observed on the traditional day, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, this year 30 May.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
GospelMark 14:12-16, 22-26(English Standard Version, Anglicised)
And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to Jesus, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?”And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him,and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.”And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.
And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.”And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it.And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Alfred O'Rahilly in his Father William Doyle SJ, a biography of an Irish Jesuit who served as a chaplain in the British army in the First World War and who was killed on 16-17 August 1917, writes on page 474 about a Mass celebrated in the trenches. Normally he was not allowed to have Mass with the men there because of the danger.
On February 2nd [1917], however, he was able to offer the Holy Sacrifice in the trenches , his chapel being a dug-out capable of holding ten or a dozen. 'But my congregation numbered forty-six,' he says, 'the vacant space was small. How they all managed to squeeze in I cannot say. There was no question of kneeling down; the men simply stood silently and reverently round the little improvised altar of ammunition boxes, "glad," as one of them quaintly expressed it, "to have a say in it." Surely our Lord must have been glad also, for every one of the forty-six received Holy Communion, and went back to his post happy at heart and strengthened to face the hardships of these days and nights of cold.' What a difference the Real Presence made in the ministrations of a Catholic chaplain!
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, No 1374 states: The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, popularly known by the Latin name Corpus Christi, celebrates this reality, the same reality that Fr Willie Doyle and the 46 soldiers celebrated in the trenches in Flanders, Belgium, on that cold Candlemas Day in 1917.
Pope Benedict XVI celebrating Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament
Tantum ergo, sung at Benediction, consists of the last two stanzas of Pange lingua, the Latin hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas for the feast of Corpus Christi and sung at Vespers (Evening Prayer) on the evening before the feast and on the feast itself.
Tantum ergo
sacraméntum Venerémur cérnui: Et antíquum documéntum Novo cedat rítui: Præstet fides suppleméntum Sénsuum deféctui.
Genitóri, Genitóque Laus et jubilátio, Salus, honor, virtus quoque Sit et benedíctio: Procedénti ab utróque Compar sit laudátio. Amen. Alleluia.
Down
in adoration falling, Lo, the sacred Host we hail, Lo, o'er ancient forms departing Newer rites of grace prevail: Faith for all defects supplying, When the feeble senses fail.
To the Everlasting Father And the Son who comes on high With the Holy Ghost proceeding Forth from each eternally, Be salvation, honor, blessing, Might and endless majesty. Amen. Alleluia.
GospelMatthew 28:16-20(English Standard
Version, Anglicised)
Now the eleven
disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed
them.And when they saw him they worshipped
him, but some doubted.And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.Go therefore and make disciples
of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the
age.”
Benedictus sit Deus Pater, Unigenitusque Dei Filius, Sanctus quoque Spiritus, quia fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam.
Blest be God the Father, and the Only Begotten Son of God, and also the Holy Spirit, for he has shown us his merciful love.
This is also the Offertory Verse in the Traditional Latin Mass on Trinity Sunday.
Twelve years ago around this time I gave a retreat to a group of Canossian Daughters of Charity in the Philippines. They included four novices and seven professed Sisters, including one from Malaysia. Their foundress, St Magdalene of Canossa bequeathed to the Sisters the mission of 'making Jesus known and loved above all'. This comes from a stance of standing at the foot of the Cross with Mary.
During my talks
each morning I shared many stories of individuals who had made Jesus known to
me, usually with no awareness that they were doing so. Some were persons I
knew. Some are now dead. Some I met only once in passing, never learning their
names. Most were poor. I know that my stories triggered off similar memories
among the Sisters of people who had made Jesus known to them as the Sisters in
turn had made him known to those they were serving.
I
see this in the context of the Communion of Saints, the angels and saints in
heaven, the members of the Church on earth, the souls in purgatory. The story
of creation tells us that we are made in the image of God. But what the author
of that first account of creation didn't know is that God is a Community of Three
Persons. Made in God's image, we are made to be in community with others.
Jusepe
de Ribera's painting of the Holy Trinity above, like a number of other
paintings, shows the dead Christ. The expression on the face of the Father
shows suffering. It is very similar to the face of the father in
Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son, painted about
thirty years later. I don't know if Rembrandt was familiar with de Ribera's
painting.
The Blessed Trinity call us into the circle of their life through suffering. We know the suffering of Jesus. Some of the great artists show to us something of the suffering of the Father.
One of the stories I told involved two persons I met only once, a mother and her daughter aged about 13 or 14. When they first approached me outside a retreat house in Cebu City on the morning of Holy Thursday 1990. I made an excuse that I was only visiting. While inside I saw the two of them sitting on the steps. The daughter had her head on her mother's shoulder. Clearly, they were tired and hungry. When I was leaving I gave them enough to buy breakfast. The young girl looked at me with the most beautiful smile I've ever seen and said to me, Salamat sa Ginoo! 'Thanks to the Lord!' She wasn't thanking me but inviting me to thank the Lord with her and her mother for his goodness. Through her hunger and tiredness she had come to know something of God's bountiful love, the love of the Father that Rembrandt reveals so powerfully.
As I reflect on this incident now, 34 years later, I see it in the light of today's Second Reading, Romans 8:14-17. St Paul writes, For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God . . . When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness. That young girl was led by the Spirit of God to thank the Father for having provided her and her mother with breakfast that day, for having listened to their prayer, Give us this day our daily bread. And she invited me as her brother in Christ to do the same. Without being aware of it she was celebrating the reality of the Holy Trinity.
And she has been calling me into the life of the Holy Trinity for all those year. I've no idea what became of her. I went to the Philippines in 1971 to do my part in making disciples of all nations and have baptised many in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But that young girl, and many others like her, have been constantly teaching me to observe all that I have commanded you and assuring me in the name of Jesus, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Benedictus sit Deus
This is Mozart's setting of today's Entrance Antiphon, composed when he was twelve.
On Thursday 23 May Pope Francis cleared the way for the canonisation of Blessed Carlo Acutis. He died from leukaemia at the age of 15. He was a computer 'geek', a skill which he used to be a 'web missionary', as the title of the video below states. If you google his name on YouTube you will find a number of videos about him, most of them short. The one below is just over 30 minutes but is very comprehensive, showing many aspects of his life as seen by others, young people of his own age who were friends of his, and others, young and older, on whose life Blessed Carlo had a huge influence, some while he was alive, others who came to know about him after his death, people drawn closer to Jesus Christ because of him. I've watched the video a number of times and each time it has been a prayerful experience, of being closer to God and with a sense of wonder at how the Blessed Trinity invites us into eternal life.
Young people can draw us into the life of the Holy Trinity, as did the 13- or 14-year old girl in Cebu City with me, as does the 12-year-old Mozart with his setting of Benedictus sit Deus, as has Blessed Carlo Acutis been doing before and after his death. Mozart and Blessed Carlo are known internationally, the young girl known only by her family and neighbours. We never know who may be drawing us into the eternal life of the Blessed Trinity.
Blessed Carlo, pray for us!
Blessed Carlo Acutis
Traditional Latin Mass
Trinity Sunday
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 05-26-2024 if necessary).
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19; Gospel).
